Two Muslim youths were injured outside a New York mosque, but police have rejected the incident as a “bias crime” because the two were slammed by a man after they harassed his girlfriend, officials say.

During the July 3 beating outside a Brooklyn mosque, 16-year-old Ahmad Emrech received a concussion, cuts, bruises and a swollen eye. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment and released. Another youth was also given a black eye, police report, but refused medical attention.

After the attack, at least one of the Muslim teens immediately went complaining to the Muslim advocacy group CAIR. The group dutifully put out a statement insisting the teens were beaten because they were Muslim.

In a statement a CAIR official claimed the man who beat the teens loosed anti-Muslim slurs at the kids. The attacker allegedly shouted, “You Muslims are the cause of all the problems of the world” and called the teens “terrorists.”

The “slurs,” CAIR said, should force the New York Police to charge the attacker with a hate crime. “The slurs heard during the assault indicate that the attack may have been fueled by hatred of the victims’ faith, thereby warranting an investigation by law enforcement into a possible bias motive,” CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher said in a posting to Facebook.

But police also report that the beatings were a result of the two teens harassing a woman sitting in a car outside the mosque. The man who beat the teens has been identified and an investigation is underway, but the incident has already been ruled out as a “bias crime.”